L I FE L E S S ON S
Maybe My Philosophy Major Was a Mistake Wallace Alcorn In undergraduate studies, I wish now that I had majored in, say, literature, although philosophy might well have been my minor. My lab science might have been biology rather than geology. I should have taken more courses in Bible in preparation for the full load of theology in seminary. I needed more psychology, sociology and history than preoccupation with what my chosen major allowed. As I entered college as a freshman, I was advised that philosophy—the “love of wisdom”—was the standard preseminary sequence. (I’ve forgotten who so advised, but I suspect sophomores.) It isn’t that I had too much philosophy but that it allowed too little of other disciplines. I took every course in the catalog. I didn’t merely major: I was obsessed. And it isn’t that philosophy is necessarily seductive. The first class session in Phil 101 began with: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.” (Col 2:8) Despite present considerations and insights, I cannot consider my adolescent choices to have been mistakes, and I have no regrets. My studies served me better than I have used them. They have been the foundation of what I have since learned and am now learning. I have learned to learn and to love learning. Perhaps that’s enough to expect from the four years right out of high school.
explication of facts. With a narrow focus on philosophy, I slipped into perceiving the discipline more as an entity or substance than a tool of intellectual inquiry and a logical way of processing information into idea. Yes, geology was helpful in apologetic defense of theology while in doctoral studies in the university. But, at least as a pastor, I encountered intellectual skeptics less frequently than confused ordinary people whom I needed to understand not so much in their thinking as in their feelings. I didn’t need Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek to understand the Bible adequately in English translation if I had only learned English grammar earlier. So, I should have taken more Bible content courses on the undergraduate level and then come to understand it yet better by what I would learn in the originals in graduate work. Getting my theology straight (at least in terms of theologies and theologians) risks predetermining what recognize in the Bible when theology should help me understand and express what I find in the Bible objective to what theology suggests I ought to find, and denominational politics requires. Just as some physicians know more about science than people and some lawyers more about law, some pastors know more about theology and even Bible than we understand people.
I know a lot. (After three masters and a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of education, I had better.) But I know a lot At the recent seventieth reunion of my class’s graduation, a more than I understand. My present task is to understand classmate asked, “So, what have you done with philosophy?” what I have but known. Moreover, what I know and even answeredwithbothcomfortandcon4dence:live.stillsee understand does not matter until I have used this so that issues as metaphysics, epistemology or axiology (aesthetics the persons for whom I am responsible know what they and ethics). But there is more to life than philosophy, and life must and understand as they should. must be lived and lived wisely. It’s wise to love life. I am still about this, and whenever I reach it, my life will be Sunday school stories did not help me understand the not merely completed but accomplished. Bible as story, literature that represents truth beyond
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